#8 Couplet

This may be kind of a stretch in a way but I'm going to go for it. On page 32, the author writes "Step out of line, hit a mine; follow the dink, you're in the pink." A couplet is two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry. In the story, the soldiers all walked through the mine fields following the leader (dink). They were following him into the pink zone which I'm guessing (and think I'm right) is the safe zone. As they were walking, they all chanted this rhyme to make sure everyone was in tune. Rat Kiley made up the chant, and they all caught on an sang it together. This is one of the good things about war. People work together as a whole to get the job done. If one of those men did not chant with the rest of the group, the outcome may have turned out differently. In a way, they were reassuring eachother that they were in this together and that if they did as the poppa-san instructed, they would come out alive and continue to move forward toward victory. Also, by chanting this rhyme, it took their minds of the blantantly obvious fact that bombs and artillery were being blasted everywhere. But, by putting their focus on the words, it allowed them to progress and not restrict themselves.